An Arizona woman was recently sentenced to three years probation for trying to poison her husband by mixing bleach in his morning coffee.

Melody Felicano Johnson was initially charged with attempted first-degree murder but ended up pleading guilty to two counts of the lesser felony charge of adding poison or a harmful substance to food or drink. She admitted to putting bleach in her husband’s coffee, although it is still unclear as to why. Her husband told investigators he “believes she was trying to kill him to collect death benefits,” but he explicitly told the court that he did not want her to spend time in prison, which apparently had a major influence on the final verdict.

Photo: Devin Avery/Unsplash

The woman’s husband began suspecting that someone was tampering with his morning coffee back in March of 2023, while stationed with the whole family in Germany. For weeks, the US airman tasted something foul in his morning coffee, so he decided to install secret cameras in the kitchen, which caught his wife Melody as she was mixing the bleach in a container and then adding it to his coffee.

Shocked by the hidden camera footage, the husband, whose name has not been revealed by the media, bought some pool water testing strips, which showed high levels of chlorine in his coffee. When investigators later checked the couple’s Arizona home, they found a container with liquid in it that smelled like bleach under the bathroom sink, and confirmed that the coffee machine also smelled like bleach.

 

The husband pretended to consume his morning coffee despite its awful taste until the family returned to the United States, at which point he alerted the police and showed them the evidence. Melody Felicano Johnson was arrested and spent nearly a year in police custody due to her inability to post a $250,000 bond. Her attorney requested the sentence be time served, and the husband explicitly told the court he did not want her to be put behind bars.

Melody Felicano Johnson and her husband were living together when the bleach poisoning took place, but they were going through a divorce, and the man believes she was trying to kill him to collect death benefits before the divorce was completed. The couple’s divorce is still pending.

 

A few years ago, we wrote about a New York woman who allegedly tried to kill her husband by lacing his coffee with boric acid.